The public policy discussion in New Orleans glanced up from its usual focus on pressing, ground-level issues like the city's murder rate and the treacherous Mississippi River to touch on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Monday evening.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright swung through town for a conversation with Mayor Mitch Landrieu, more or less defending President Barack Obama's recent speech on the conflict and placing the recent Arab uprisings on par with game-changing world events like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An overflow crowd turned up at the New Orleans Museum of Art to hear the mayor talk international relations with Albright, also a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who spent hours among Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at Camp David in the 1990s as a member of President Bill Clinton's Cabinet.

Spectators filled the museum's Stern Auditorium to capacity, and dozens watched the conversation by video feed in seats lined up in the museum's foyer. Later they got a first peek at Albright's large collection of pins, which she began amassing as subtle tools of diplomacy more than a decade ago. About 200 of the pins are on display at the museum through Aug. 14.

In her remarks Monday, Albright suggested that Obama's controversial declaration -- that peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine should begin with the pre-1967 borders, with certain land swaps on each side -- was essentially in keeping with the framework for peace laid out by Clinton.

"I think the part that kind of got left out of the story," she said, "was the 'with swaps' part."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, bluntly rejected Obama's proposal at a White House meeting last week, calling the old borders indefensible.

Landrieu asked Albright if Netanyahu perhaps left out the "swaps" part on purpose to make his own political statement.

"He's in a tough political situation," Albright said, referring to the "far-right" party Netanyahu relies on to stay in power and the Arab uprisings that have caused so much anxiety about Israel's relationship with its neighbors.

"The Arab Spring is one of the major game-changers of our time," Albright said. "I've lived through several game changers; one is World War II, one is the Cold War, then the end of the Cold War and then this.

"The question," she added, "is how secure Israel can feel within the context of a changing Middle East. Israel should ultimately feel more comfortable with other democracies around, but the transitional process is a little complicated at the moment."

Then Landrieu and Albright got down to the real discussion point of the day: Albright's large collection of pins and their political significance.

Albright recalled one of her first assignments at the U.N.: "to say perfectly terrible things about Saddam Hussein constantly, which he deserved." At the time, a poem turned up in an Iraqi newspaper comparing her to an "unparalleled serpent," and she happened to have a snake pin. She explained the connection to puzzled reporters and thought, "This is fun."

From then on, "on good days I wore flowers and butterflies and balloons, and on bad days, terrible insects and various animals." The other members of the U.N. Security Council -- all men -- could express themselves with colored and patterned ties, Albright said. She had pins.

As the mayor's conversation with Albright wrapped up, the conversation turned local again.

Among the hundreds of pins on display in New Orleans this summer is a diamond-studded one called the "Katrina Pin," presented to Albright during one of her trips to the city by a man whose mother died because of the storm.

"I said I can't accept this," Albright recalled. "And he said you have to because our mother loved you and it would be our honor." She called it the most significant pin in the collection, "because it's a sign of how an inanimate object can in fact become a symbol of relationships and friends and love."